Hey everyone, before we jump in, this week's a little bit of
something different. We used to do skits.
This isn't a skit. Sorry, but it is gonna be a
little chat. To let him.
Down very quick one. It's been a year since we
started the podcast. It has.
No it's not. It's been a year and two weeks
because I missed the year, weeks ago.
Yeah, it was the start of February, so we're a couple
weeks into the year now. So thank you everyone.
Some people up in this thing since episode one, which is
unbelievable. It's obviously we've picked up
other people. On my mum, Your mum.
Rishi Sunak, you know all your customers out there.
Big thank you for listening every week.
And a huge thank you for getting involved in all our socials at
Teach Seat Repeat podcast on Instagram and just letting us
know how you think the episodes are going.
Because I don't think we ever expected to even make it to a
year. Never mind.
And we love you all. Except for that one star.
Yeah, for that one, that we all. We all get pissed with.
That I don't like you? Umm, but everything else?
Yeah, lovely. So I just thought what we do,
it's been a year, if you wanted to get as a birthday present,
you know you could you could get a birthday present.
All we want is for you guys to please share the podcast.
If you enjoy the podcast, please share with someone that's
invaluable to us. And if you haven't already, we
have mentioned that, but reviews help us so much because when
someone lands on our podcast on one of these streaming sites,
the more reviews, the more reliability, the more people are
likely to play and then obviously Hayden, what's their
press play, they're gonna stay on.
Yeah, of course. Yeah.
Why wouldn't? And as Dylan said, as I said a
long time ago, we we do this podcast because we want that
podcast money. So we need, we need people to be
sharing this so we can get the money for the podcast.
That's all we're doing it for. Right.
Yeah, that's, that's obviously. That's how we say yes.
Because I think most people make money by not making money for a
year. That's a good way to make.
Money have not made any money from.
This, this, this is normally in podcast where response would go.
What are we doing? Need financial planning spaces?
I'm joking, I'm going jokes. With rambling on, anyone knew
has turned off now. So guys, please can you give us
a review Please can you share the podcast?
Please just. Please do it.
Just please. OK.
Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Tech Step
Repeat. My name is.
Dylan and my name is Aiden. No, it's not.
It's Mr Beg. Please please.
Everyone got that kid over there.
Ohh, please. It's when they do the early end.
Please. I didn't turn.
You did because you didn't at the end, so I know you're lying.
Do you just really randomly because I just said the word
miss? Do you?
Do you get called miss all the? Time I got Miss all the time.
But there's not there's not an equivalent because the
equivalent is Mr That just sounds crazy.
A child did want to call me Mr And I was like, is this Mary
Poppins? Hello Mr But there's no
equivalent cause the equivalent is Sir, and that's so much
higher. Than get the odd, isn't it?
I get the odd. Sir, don't you feel
uncomfortable though? Like Miss Smith, Sir, it's like
so. Different I had, I've had a
couple of kids over the years, so just decided no, I'm gonna,
it's not supposed to be. So yeah, I think it's Year 6.
They're like, no. And one of the kids, funny
enough, the other day he came up to me and said, what do what do
they call what do they call you at secondary school?
Will it still be Mr Stevens or was it like Sir?
And I was like probably Sir, it was like, OK, I'm gonna start
doing that. Get ready.
And you forgot immediately. Didn't do it once.
Yeah, I didn't know you were in class 3, kid.
Get off the street, walking from the shop.
It wasn't 20 year old Ohh God. You're going to get ready.
He was just some secondary school teacher work I always
gotta do. He's gonna call me.
All these upset, upset, upset. I'm sorry mate, you don't have a
teaching qualification, you just some random bloke from Tesco.
Ohh God. What we're doing We're recording
this podcast quite early in the. Morning.
So we're a bit delirious, Quite working.
I mean, I quite like it. We get the best feedback from
our delirious ones. I think we should do a midnight
podcast, like where we where we stayed up all night the night
before. Completely delusional.
God, get some snacks and stuff. Not sugar for me, but Hayden,
how's your sugar? No sugar.
Going well. I did eat 1/3 of a cake last
night that you served on a plate.
Third. Victory.
Don't explain why it was specifically 1/3 what did you?
Do right. It's been like it's Lawrence
birthday the other day, so of course.
So your no sugar February lasted until the 8th of February.
Ohh no it didn't. No, it didn't, because it lasted
until 9:00 AM, the 1st of February you had a cream.
Of course. But yeah, for Lauren's birthday.
And this is the problem, right? In all seriousness, I have an
actual problem eating sugar and chocolate.
And you know, I've said it before.
I knew the second I could jump on something and take advantage
of it, and I absolutely done that.
Yeah, Lawrence Birthday. OK, here's the 7th cake.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's. Terrible.
I'm so bad and seeing you say no to the cake made me feel ashamed
of myself because I was like you should have, that's why.
Because I was the one in Tesco. Buying it was like I'm looking
at it for ages thinking I wasn't on birthday 2 days.
Yeah, I know, I know. We're going round there for
dinner. Should I get?
I'll get a cake and me and I probably would have a bit.
You didn't have it, so I had a third of the cake.
Well, this is, yeah, because you brought a cake in.
Firstly, I was like, you know what?
That's fine because I do need to go over it.
I'm not gonna have sugar. I can't make everyone else not
have sugar. That's fine.
So you brought the cake in and then you were feeding with her.
Lauren was feeding Rory, your lawn was just chilling out and I
was doing the washing up after dinner and you just shout into
me going. Dylan, can you get us that cake
ready? I was like, what?
That's different. That's different to me.
Knowing it exists, I'll cut it up for you.
OK, so there's this cake. And I thought, I can't cut that
cake into quarters because then one is for me, by definition,
there's four of them. So I cut the cake into thirds.
It gave everyone a huge slice. Buttered them up.
The sugar is one of those ones from like Tesco, like Tesco,
Finest, like the. Smaller ones.
Podcast money is coming in. No, no, no, no, no, no Guys,
everyone. You need to know it was one of
those Tesco fights. Not no, not Tesco specific,
right? No, no, no, no, no.
Tesco's finest Victoria sponge with jam made from the suburbs
of France. Actually, thank you.
It was £74.15 and it was delicious.
Yeah, it was. It was nice.
My third was ohh it's. Great.
Yeah. Because everyone listening, ohh
yeah, I can think of a Tesco's extra finest.
I always get that. Well, yeah.
They're those sites where you can come into.
Four. No one looks at them and it's no
one knows. No one.
No one's buying them. Cost of living crisis, mate.
I'm sorry, I actually just picked up some sponge and some
icing and tell you what. Though you must have spent all
your money on food instead of clothes, because you've got your
free top on finally. Yeah, finally got my hoop hoop
top on. So if you haven't, go back about
five or six episodes and. I think it was more than that.
You. Know we would do.
I don't. I never know what we're doing.
I don't understand why we got into a conversation about it was
a game and. It had a little game.
It was just stupid people got involved online.
There's a book of ours that's the collective noun for.
Ours. Yeah, we, we decided it's not
Parliament. Don't come at me with your facts
and figures that Parliament. It's not that Parliament, Jesus.
Anyway, how are you? I'm good.
How are you doing Alright. I feel really playful.
Do you? Playful.
Wow. Good.
We've got a serious. Episode Mossman.
Yeah. Anyway, should we really quickly
catch up and then crack on? Yeah, go on.
Because I think Right Assessments can be a very
interesting chat. Anyway, yeah, good.
My favourite finger pointing to the, you know, gonna be a good
point. Anyway, we went for a Curry last
week. Paul.
I don't even mention Paul on the podcast before I trained with
Paul. OK, Paul's a guy, he's had a
whole career before we going to teach him.
He was an engineer or something and he had a whole career before
going to teaching him. Well, spent a whole year with
him, engineering engine or something.
Anyway, I trained with him, we travelled into university
together, we had breakfast every morning.
It's just a sound guy, really, really nice guy.
We love him and we went, we go for a car with him.
It averages out like once a term, but Oh my
It's just always been really funny because we walked into
teaching as our first career around the same time as he
walked in as his second career. I always remember going to his
room because we ended up working in the same school to begin
with, and he'd be there, like heading his hands like boys, you
don't know how how hard this job is.
And I was like, huh, that's just normal that wait till 7:00
tonight. And he's like, what?
This is ridiculous because basically Paul used to enjoy
volunteering as a reader at his children's school.
So he'd go in and like one afternoon a week and read with
the kids. And he was like this Teaching
lark's great. I'm gonna do this, do this.
And then obviously you step into professional like, I've well,
I've got all this. He's just hilarious.
So that was nice. Went for a Curry and I printed
out some more bookmarks. So this is, this is niche.
I have no idea what episode this was mentioned, but it was a long
time ago and if you scroll back far enough on our Instagram
before the memes that I've posted, there was a picture.
I've made bookmarks with Hayden's face on it and it's a
screenshot from a YouTube video we did and the kids obviously
obsessed with it. And I've had this group of girls
from, I think your class, or maybe a different class in year
six who have seen them because I gave just four out like they
were gold dust and never been pestering me for about a month.
Like, can we have this, please? I'm like, yeah, yeah, sure.
But obviously you have 16 other jobs that actually need to get
done before you make a bookmark on your face.
I finally gave it to them. They were so excited and they
ran off and they they were like, so great though, thank you so
much. Like they couldn't have been
more grateful. Yeah, they ran out into the
playground at lunchtime. And so I I turned away to get
ready for my lesson and I just looked out the playground again
and what did I see? The girls surrounding the head
teacher shoving it in his face and head teacher, like, just
bewildered. Like, yeah.
OK. Knowing immediately that was
you. I reckon this is what it was,
Dylan. I reckon his second thought was
a bit Hayden's done that for himself.
Yeah, it's kind of stupid thing. You're the second most likely.
Person that day it was. It was really sweet actually.
It's quite funny. It was dismissing the kids in
the day and the whole the whole school is kind of at the same
place. We can all see each other.
And I just saw a kid walking out from Euphoria 5.
I don't know probably your class just in our hand.
And I was like, oh, that's really sweet.
Everything else reading book and shoved in the bag.
Everything else, Letters shoved in the bag.
Left their shoes in the classroom.
But really important that we hold this because I was just
really immediately wants to show look, look what Mr. Price made
us look. This bookmark.
This is Steven's face. On it.
Ohh man, it's so good. I was thinking of starting to
make it an incentive for reading.
Honestly. Just like, OK, if you read three
times a week for this whole time, you get Mr Stevens.
But it works, yeah. Mr. Price There's a picture of
Mr of Dylan The picture of Dylan as a baby just looking in areas
because he's like really posed well, you must be like 2.
Yeah, I look simultaneously 2 and 57.
Yeah, you look like an old man, but I bet you and I was like,
this is brilliant. So I turned them into little
laminated cards and made them a reward to, like, incentivize my
math. Class to do signed.
Five of them, yeah, there was there was signed.
Trading guys were like 50 altogether.
Five were signed and it was just random.
Like they were desperate for the signed one.
Ohh God it was so funny. It worked though.
They would do anything for those cards.
Like trading cards. It was, it was brilliant.
It was pretty good. But yeah, apart from that, it's
half time, absolutely buzzing, just that half time feeling
never, never beat that and we're getting the house done.
That's not stressful, I guess, because we're just starting now.
After the baby came, baby put a pause to it.
Anyone doesn't know We moved house at the end of August, baby
came start of October. We spent them five weeks just
getting house habitable for him. And then since then we've not
done anything, finally starting to actually get some stuff done.
So no one's interested. And before I had a house, people
talk about house renovations. I'm like, I don't care.
Switched off already, yeah. So there you go.
We're gonna have done. How's your week, Hayden?
Yes, alright, half term. Cool.
Nice one anyway. So.
Ohh, done. Come on.
That's right. No, I've got one thing to.
Say one thing better be. Good.
This is awful because you'll be even.
You'll feel this pain and anyone don't know feel this pain.
I accidentally left my independent rights at school and
they've got to be marked like. Well, they've got to be teacher.
Assessed. Your your key stage two year six
writing. Yeah, it does.
Interesting. Yeah, these books got marked.
Yeah, forgot them. So that's annoying.
So they gotta be done sometime next in the week now.
I'm just thinking, just thinking back to start the episode where
you said you don't smoke thing happened this week and you said
you've got one thing, which is you left your books at home.
I don't want to mention your girlfriends birthday trip away
with your baby. I was going to mention that as
well. You said one thing.
One thing about school, one other thing.
Getting out the way. We experience responded now by
Port Lympne. No, we're not.
We're not sponsored by them. But if they want to, yeah, I did
go to Port Lymm for Lawrence birthday.
To Port Lympne, because we've got a lot of listeners who don't
live in this race specific area. OK.
Not actually a zoo, is it? So, wildlife reserve?
I don't know. It's It's a It's a posh.
It's a posh. It's not a zoo.
Why? What are you on about?
It's not a zoo. Tesco Finest.
Sorry. Tesco Finest Cakes.
I go to Wildlife Reserves. It's nice.
You're not gonna catch. Sorry, work case, it's not too
lazy. When you go there, what do you
see? Is it?
Well, I saw a beautiful tree top bubble that we stayed in.
It was fantastic experience. Did you take just go?
Extra Fun is spun by Tesco Extra fillers sponge and we stayed in
our bubble and we walked around the.
World reserve, we need to start to look at the dividends are
given out in our business because I don't know how you're
you're getting all this podcast money from somewhere.
But it was really nice. Yeah, I'm sure.
Anyone that's nature reserve, anyone that lives.
Excuse me, I did not go to a bloody zoo.
I went to a nature reserve. Don't you know Ohh Like, I'm so
sorry. I'm so nature reserve, but it's
a bloody bird sanctuary. I saw rhinos and everything.
Wingham Wildlife Park You and dude.
Sorry. But very much recommend if you
live in the South of England, do check out Portland.
No zoos in Kent. Ohh, whatever.
Just go there. It's great.
This is great. Yeah.
All right, guys, take 3. It takes three.
It's not my fault. Anyway, we really from either.
Stop coughing. You got a mouthful of Victoria
sponge. You trying to the podcast?
Sorry Tesco finest. Anyway, you guys have seen the
title before? We have because we always
decided the title after we film. What's the best title for this
podcast? But you get the gist.
It's about writing assessment so I'm trying to screw it back.
Hayden, you've done some research here because last night
I was sleeping so you've done some research whilst I was just
chilling out and I want you to tell me, OK And although this is
at home. Well you, Boris, what do you
want to know? I want to know everyone at home
who have a teacher or not. What is writing assessment?
OK, so when you get to the end of Key stage 2, which is year
six, we've all heard of the Sats, maths and English.
But there's obviously a bit missing there, which is writing.
Because in English we're talking about tests for comprehension,
right? And GPS, grammar, punctuation
and spelling. But we still need to somehow
make sure people know where children are.
They're writing. So what's the history of this?
What? What the teachers have to do?
Where? Where we ended up today.
What's? Going like, let's just go back
in time a bit and say in context, right?
Because you know what? As a teacher, I didn't really
know the full history of this. And so some of.
You. But we qualified in 2014, right?
Yeah, so. Vague memories of being at
school. Yeah, exactly.
So our system now is very different to probably what we
went through primary school, right.
OK. So right, going back in time a
bit, 1988, the Education Reform Act which we have talked about
before when we talked about the. Curriculum.
Big moment. National curriculum comes in and
with that comes in the the, the Sats, so the standard assessment
tasks. I never knew what that.
Was standardised assessment tests, but it's not.
It's standard assessment tasks. Sats, right?
And they were like, OK, we need, we need to assess kids, we do
actually need to know if this national curriculum is working
or not sure. So it kind of makes sense,
right? And they brought in the key
stage 1 Sats at the end of year two and key stage 3 as well.
So in secondary school, right. And then a few years later in
1995, I guess when those first, that first cohort got to year
six, yeah, would be they introduced the key stage two
Sats, which are probably the most famous Sats really because
later on the key stage 3 Sats were actually scrapped.
I think we might. You might not have done it,
actually. I think I missed.
It I think I was the last. Year I think I didn't do.
It because it was like your 10 just before the GCSE these other
tests I was like why? Why no?
Yeah, I don't know. Actually no, because key stage
3. Vietnam, isn't it?
Ohh Yeah. Nine maybe, Yeah.
Yeah, 10, yeah. Nine.
Yeah. And I remember doing the Sats
there. Anyway, I think we did, yeah.
So yeah. So 1995 key stage, two Sats come
in. And it was interesting because
it got boycotted massively by the unions back then because.
It was. What was it?
What do you mean? What was even happening?
Was it writing or? OK, so the Sats involved maths,
English and science, right? So it was everything.
So it was kind of similar to the tests we do now in.
Math in a sit down formal. Test, sit down, formal test.
So for writing, it was alongside the reading of things.
For writing, they also did a sit down formal test where it was
like here you go, here's your prompt.
So it was a random genre. Here's your prompt.
You've got like an hour. I can't remember the timing was,
but it was an extended piece of writing and then that went off
and was externally marked just like all the other tests are
marked. So just one piece of one piece
of writing, one piece of extending.
Anyone who teaches now, who wasn't around then probably
thinks that's crazy. It feels mad, doesn't it?
Yeah. And there were.
What we're gonna look at a bit later in this episode is a
review that came in in 2011, which is what ended up changing
right to what we have now. That the kind of teacher
assessment model. Yeah.
And in that review it was saying like, this is a really flawed
system currently because, you know, listed off a few reasons
which we'll go into. Yeah, that's.
Yeah, just back to the history of it.
So teachers. So when it all came in, the
teachers workload went up massively.
In what way? In in marking tests and things.
That's a mark. All sorts of tests.
I don't know how to mark the actual sets.
I don't think so, but there was loads of marking involved,
right? Which wasn't paid at the time.
I don't really know exactly why. So maybe do you think, was it
like the Sats were being passed around like you'd market
different? School.
Yeah. Yeah.
Not sure. Not because again this.
Again, for anyone I'm sat here listening to you like.
What you what do you? Mean like, can you clarify
because I don't understand because it's crazy to think now
that in the year 6 Sats you'd then Mark do marketing like
unless you've opted in for money.
Yeah, which is. Terrible what was, but they they
estimated that about 44 hours of additional workload came in for
teachers with the Sats and teachers obviously just like no,
what you talking about, why am I?
Gonna do and it's funny because now it's about 57.
Yeah, 45. Now it's like, cool, that's
nothing. But you know, it was They tried
to point, their unions, tried to boycott.
The whole thing was like, no, get rid of what we doing.
This is mental, yeah, but we need to be.
Paid. But that's really interesting
because I think a lot of union bashing lately for people
outside of education and stuff, and even I think inside
education now I talked to a lot of people about the unions and
they're a bit like, well, not enamoured by them.
Even though gone through the strikes and stuff like, OK,
well, we did get this, like what are they still going about this?
It's important to remember it's stuff like this actually in the
past, which they've done a job, yeah, but you can't introduce
all of this. And just like, OK, here's and
then the unions actually stood up.
If they hadn't done that, perhaps at the minute not,
nothing would have changed. Still, remember reading from the
report. I didn't write it down, but it
said that initially they estimated an increase in teacher
workload of like 30 hours. That's what they like budgeted
for. I know.
Yeah, we'll just have 30. That's fine.
But the budget is 0. Let's put 30 hours in, because
yeah. That's right.
Yeah. But it went up to about 44 in
the review was saying to people obviously annoyed that this is
like it's not even, it's higher than they weren't even happy
about the 30 hours increase. But that at least was like this
is what it's going to be And it was more that's crazy.
So that's what it used to be up up until around.
So there was a review in 2011. So at this point, there's a
there's a science test, there's a science test, an English
reading test, an English writing testing test.
English grammar, punctuation, spelling, writing kind of
included some grammar, punctuation elements.
I think it was like a spelling test that went with it, but that
kind of encompassed. All sure.
Sure. I believe there was even a
speaking and listening. I think, yeah.
Doing that, yeah. Yeah.
Speaking, listening, that kind of just got phased out.
That's not really anything now is it?
No, it's just not fair. And obviously maths is just
stayed the same. Maths, yeah, just had those just
maths tests, which I'm sure I've slightly changed the format, but
they've always been the same sort of thing.
So that's what it was. That's what it was for a long
time. So what was the issue with the
fact it was a test then? Like other than workload and
stuff, yeah. What is the issue with there
being a writing test? Because no one seems to have an
issue with being a math. Test, Right.
So this was really interesting. So I read this review.
It was called the Lord Bew Review in 2011.
The beer. Review Lord Bew sounds like some
nice Tesco finest. Cake.
Yeah, I saw that name and I thought, I'll read that.
I'm reading that. That's my that's my kind of guy.
My God. So I've actually wrote down what
what he and his team assessed as like the problem, right with
this, you know, writing sure test and first thing was too
dependent on genre. So because it was just one piece
of extended writing, a lot of the complaints from schools
were, you know, some of my kids just don't read.
This genre doesn't really suit them, and I don't want to write.
About It's non-fiction, but they're really.
Imaginative. Yeah, really they are.
You know, it's potluck. What genre they got so some kids
would perform. Better.
So it was really just a simple prompt where it was right a
diary entry, and then their whole assessment for writing was
based on that. I haven't seen an example of it,
but that's the impression I. Get from this is that it was
just one piece of extended writing.
And you get a level. Yeah.
And you get level at the end of it, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It went off to be marked, which we'll come to in a minute.
So that was one thing. The next thing was it was way
too subjective because it was external markers.
I'm imagining it was the same system now where it's just you
could just be an external martial can apply to be that
usually teachers doing. It.
One external marker. Really, really subjective there
based on their opinions on writing.
Yeah, because if they think, for example if they value GPS,
grammar, punctuation and things much higher, much more highly
than imagination, let's say. But another writer values like
an amazing story, hooks them, and they can forgive the odd
capital letter exactly that. They could both get the same
level. But if.
It's incomparable, isn't it? Yeah.
And again that was mentioned in the report that bias towards,
you know, punctuation and things and some people valued more.
So it was a broken system and it was interesting he was comparing
with other countries as well and saying that England was an
anomaly because in basically everywhere else in the world at
the time that was doing writing assessment in the same sort of
way with an exam, there was always at least two two external
markers not related. They're just two people
independently market and then the kind of, you know, they look
amalgamation like anything from the judges for anything like
boxing or whatever. You're not gonna have one
person. You have a few people and then
you look at the scores to find an average or something.
Yeah, so that was another thing. The next one was, and I think
this is a really fair point and it was just unrealistic that
every single child will perform their best on that day.
Therefore, comparisons between the children.
It's not really fair because some kids, they're just not
going to produce their best piece of writing on that.
Day. Is that not true for any test
ever? Yeah, I guess so.
I guess so, But I suppose at least with.
Let's take an example lease with maths tests.
There are 110 questions sure for you to get an idea of their
maths understanding, but they might not perform their best on
that coordinates question that day.
But it's not going to be the be all event and be all and end.
All OK, so it's not in the same way more children are likely to
have a bad day writing than they are about their man, I guess.
The comparison could be if there was 7 writing assessments.
Sure. At least I gave one of them.
You could look at you, but one thing they weren't doing their
best on that day. But it wasn't.
It was just this one opportunity to write.
And if you didn't do your best on that day for whatever reason,
external reasons, or you're just nervous, or just you just feel
sick or whatever. Like you already.
Said, yeah, you know, it's just not fair to be like, OK, all
these, all these kids did their best.
Let's compare them all. Yeah, so that was another thing
and two more things. And it wasn't very reflective of
the writing process and it still isn't.
Now, if you think about the writing process, if you're in
schools, how often do you actually to get an assessed
piece of writing? Do you just go to the kids 5
minutes before they do it right is what you doing, guys.
You're gonna write a newspaper report and it's gonna be on
this. Off you go.
I'm going to assess this piece of writing you just wouldn't
like. Some schools do cold writes,
don't they? The start of a unit.
They'll do a bit of writing like that to then show them on the
progress 3 weeks later or whatever.
But as a final piece, you don't do that.
And finally it was just and I'm glad they mentioned this.
It's just hard to mark it literally just said.
It's just really difficult to mark writing.
And put it in a box. We find that now.
We're gonna talk about it later and how it's moved and like
what? What it's gone to.
Umm, but it I find that tricky now.
I find I find that really hard. So, OK, there's no, there's new
systems. Introduced.
Yeah, right, Following that review, by the way.
So that review came. Out.
So it was accepted and it was widely different.
OK fine. So this this new system comes
in. I've spoken to people who were
around when it moved. OK right.
And and they say ah, but thank goodness they got rid of the old
way. So as teachers who have
qualified a bit later and only know teacher assessment, which
is away from the external test, and we'll talk about what it is
now in a second. But before we do, I know for a
fact that move from a tested assessment with one person.
I can get him out here. Yeah.
To a more wholesome teacher assessment project.
Right. From the person who teaches them
over time, you're with them every day.
That was seen as a really good move.
Yeah. So whatever we're about to say
now, in terms of how the system is, I don't think that the
answer will be to go back to the old system.
So it's really interesting then what we see today.
Then we're gonna compare it with what you're about to tell us.
What was supposed to happen. What was it supposed to look
like when? It was just, before I say that
one little point to make because I thought it was really
interesting in this same report that was suggesting we moved to
teacher assessment of writing over time.
It was also, as a good report would do, it was kind of
highlighting the flaws of potential flaws of that as well.
Yeah, and it was. And it was just saying there is
just one issue with teacher assessment and that is just the
reliability of it. If you've got thousands of
teachers across the country and it's supposed to be a
standardised like testing system, it's there's going to
be. Some it's not going to solve
that issue of it being hard to mark and.
Judge and I thought this was really interesting.
I think you'll find this interesting.
I just hadn't thought of this before.
And one of the one of the points they made in the review was that
studies had shown that minorities, yeah, had what under
assessed compared to white counterparts.
What? When was the country in which?
In English writing. During the test or after the
test moved? No, sorry.
They were doing some studies on teacher assessment before
they've done the changes, right. OK.
Because some teacher assessment was already happening and they
were doing studies on it and they were showing in order to be
able to say let's move to teach basically had to see it was
exactly that. And they were seeing there was
actually already an unfair bias. Sure.
With minorities. With minorities.
And that was really. Interesting said, well known
thing with job applications and stuff now.
Yeah, you you've got to the systems and stuff that big
companies buy into where it's completely anonymised.
Yeah. And and you don't see the name
and stuff because it's it's just proven beyond doubt.
You know, there's some people out there who get red in the
face when anyone mentions there's racism in the world,
like, ohh there. Is unconscious bias racism as
well, that kind of stuff? He Does he?
Caught. It exists, and it's been proven
time and time again that if you see a name where you can
associate that with an ethnicity, that same CV with a
name which you associate with a more traditional British English
white name. Hmm.
More often than not they go for the traditional English white
name. Yeah, unconsciously not.
Not saying someone sat there being horribly racist with their
mind, I'm gonna be horrible. There might be, there might be.
But also, even if they're not consciously doing it, it's still
a huge problem. And if we're going to move to
teacher assessment, you need to be aware of that.
That's really. Super interesting because I'd
never really heard that argument made before.
Yeah, with teacher assessment. Right, Yeah.
And the second thing was, this is really interesting.
Probably laugh. We're gonna talk about this a
lot later. The teachers, there's there's a
chance teachers will make generous assessments.
Yeah, if the pressure increases under increasing pressure to
like. Perform guys TuneIn for this
whole episode, please, because we're gonna have a long chat I
think, at the end of this episode about why that might be
a problem and what we've seen, I think.
And more hard, I guess. The answer to this, I guess from
their point of view was OK, we need some sort of moderation,
then we need to moderate. Writing if we bring in teacher
assessment. Need to moderate?
Let's look then what? What it's supposed to be, then.
So they get rid of the test. Yeah.
And this report comes out and says, OK, look, we've looked at
the drawbacks of teacher assessment.
Yeah, we need to make sure all of this is involved.
And no problem. We're going to move now away
from a test to this new system where the teacher decides what
level the children are at. Here's what it should look like.
So what did they say at the time, 2011?
I'm going to read this. I'm going to summarise it.
I'm going to read this to you. I thought it was so interesting
I copied and pasted it here. So 2 paragraphs.
Can you read it in the voice of what you think?
Now button kind of OK stop doing it.
Nothing it. Would never do that.
First off, you're like this bit, OK?
And then this. This is the juicy bit.
Alright, here we go. Ready.
Yes. Read it.
Get. Sorry.
Get comfortable. So long old.
Read coming up. I like that they put this in and
I knew you'd like it, which is why did it did.
However, there is much more to her writing than spelling,
punctuation, grammar, vocabulary and handwriting.
OK. And we believe writing
composition in a wide range of formats for different purposes
and audience should also be a core part of the statutory
assessment of writing this. This was in a chunk where I was
talking about the reliability of.
Basically teachers were assessing the writing, but some
were just basing it on SPAG GPS, some were basing it on the
creativity. And it was like, can we accept
that there is more to writing than being able to put the
commas in the right place? But.
Here's the problem we're going to talk about later, so I don't
get too much into it, but as soon as you open up creativity,
as it should be, as it should be, by the way.
But as soon as you open that can of worms to say we should also
be judging the creativity of their writing, it's so, like,
subjective. Yeah, it's hard.
It's really, really hard. Which is why we always fall back
into. Not exactly.
So we'll talk about later what it sounded.
What should it look? Here's the juice I've been
asking you for 10 minutes now. This is what should it look.
This is the summary. This is it.
This is what they suggested. And I read this and I thought,
wow, is this like, now you should keep telling me what you
thought I'm building up. This is called tension, Lord,
Beer. Suspense.
Here we go. Ready.
Yeah. We do not wish the moderation
process to impose additional burdens on teachers.
We do not feel it would be helpful or appropriate for
schools to create portfolios of work or specially prepared
showpiece examples. We believe it would be most
appropriate for moderation to review exercise books and other
examples of marked written work marked written marked of a range
of purposes for a range of purposes taken from the whole
teaching year. This could include written work
from other subjects as well as English.
If moderators review marked work produced in the course of
everyday teaching in year six, together with the teachers
associated comments really clear here, they will get a strong
sense both of the pupils attainment and the teachers
assessment skill. Yeah, without creating any
additional workload. Yeah, we feel it may also be
helpful for moderators to have the option of meeting the pupils
whose work they have. Reviewed Wow, Right Can I?
Supposed to be? Can I summarise quickly here?
Because the the gist I'm getting from this is to correct me if
I'm wrong. From you reading that, to me,
the idea is that we're going to assess teachers to assess the
writing. Yeah, don't do anything
differently. You continue to teach your
children writing throughout the year.
At the end of the year, pick up their exercise book, look at
everything they've produced and done.
Yep. And then come to an assessment
where it's like, OK, well, cool. If I'm moderating this now, I
can see the teachers picked up capital letters at the start of
the year, full stops. And I can see that's moved a bit
across here. This person still working on
maybe putting clauses together with conjunctions or maybe even
stretching their right and with semicolons and really pushing
their punctuation. But also I can see, yeah, we've
done a lovely diary entry here and then they've moved on to a
nonfiction, non chronological report and I can see here a
newspaper report. That's really tricky.
The transferable skills. Yeah, I can, I can see coming
across here all these things. So like a holistic approach,
which is just looking at the year that they've been?
Given to the child a bit as well.
Yeah, talk to child, talk to the teacher.
Really holistic. I don't want to see these
published pieces of work in this special book where the teacher
hasn't touched it. I just want to look at their
book because it doesn't need to be extra work guys.
You don't need to go home and spend your half term, you know,
doing this, doing a basically a moderation every single time you
mark. Yeah, they're independent
writing. Yeah, just just teach them
English and then we'll just look at their whole book of because
I'm professional enough to look at that writing and know when
it's the kids handwriting and know when it's the teacher
suggesting to do something. I'm not stupid.
I can see when the kids have done it themselves.
Because they wrote it, it's really weird because all the
work in between they're independent rights is terrible,
but when it comes to their big right, it's really good.
So yeah, look at the whole. Book.
OK, so that's really interesting.
So that's what it should have looked like.
Yeah. OK, so I guess my point here is
what kind of so that that came in cool.
Obviously we know over time it's been eroded and the pressure has
increased like they said it was gonna be.
I want to talk firstly about this whole idea of independent
writing. So what we've seen here in the
suggestion in the lobbies report over a decade ago now, just over
a decade, is you simply teach writing.
Writing is really complicated. Writing I think, is the hardest
thing to teach children well, and the hardest thing to get
really good work out of the children you're teaching them.
You can model things and you can follow processes and you can
have these kind of crutches to go onto.
And once you kind of you know how to add, you know how to add.
Once you know how to work out the mean average, you know how
to work out the mean average. Practise with with English
comprehension. Even reading, reading, reading
clarify meaning. That's harder than maths,
reading comprehension. Because you can't teach children
what all of the words mean. You can't teach children all of
the spellings are you can do spelling rules, you can teach
them ways of trying to work out what a word might mean.
You can teach them retrieval skills.
Cool. When it comes to writing.
Hmm. It's really hard.
Because suddenly we need to judge them on independent
writing. We need to see what these
children can do themselves when they sit and write.
That makes sense. Of course we're going to assess
children what they can do. When I'm saying to them, telling
them what to do, that's completely pointless.
It's really hard to do that though.
I just want to get that across to people.
It's it's really hard to get good writing.
So is this system now because of teacher assessment?
Do you think that has directly caused a an an increase in
teachers being generous with their assessment teachers being
stressed teachers basically. And the overall point of this
section I want to be is how independent is their independent
writing at the minute? I think it's a totally, totally
broken system, right? I read the review and I felt I
almost forgot that this 2024 and I thought I was back in 2011.
I read that review last night and I thought, this is really
good. Yeah, I actually like this.
I like what this was suggesting and I think this was a massively
positive change. I just don't think it happened
because that what I just read there is not the not the reality
right now. That's not how things happen.
You know, you, you, you go around to a school, the chances
are they do have these, what do they call it?
Showpiece examples. Specially prepared showpiece
examples in a separate book. They do have them.
But but OK, explain to people then why do they have these
published bits of work? It's honestly the harsh, really
harsh reality of that is, is so that they can further assess
their children. That is the only reason.
It's not because, Oh yeah, because we really value our
children rewriting all of their work again.
Because you think about it, it's almost a complete.
Waste of schools. Schools, I think, try to, when
they try to convince themselves that they're not doing the wrong
thing, they do try to say things like ohh because it's great for
the children, because they get to see they're finished writing,
all published, all nicely, get don't care.
No, I've never met a kid in my life.
That cared about that, Can I, can I talk about the process
with a published piece of work? Yeah.
So very clearly here what we're supposed to do is just teach
kids writing. It says explicitly look for,
look for a teacher, comments and assessment.
Because we can see how well the teachers can give feedback.
And also you can use the teachers feedback to see whether
they're doing as well. That's the.
Point and has been edited by them, given the teacher
feedback. Because, yeah, it's independent
writing. They're in the room still.
Yeah, you know, we're still gonna help the children to
achieve well, but they still need to do it.
But with a published piece of work.
And you're probably if you're sat at home working in a school,
you probably know exactly what I'm gonna say.
And if you don't, this is what happens in schools.
This is what when you see rule writings, everyone's expected at
writing, everyone's expected level.
It's because this is happening. There is no school in the land,
in my opinion, where completely independent in the land, in the
land, they're completely independently.
A whole class of children are meeting the expected standard in
writing. The expected standard in
writing. Incredibly hard to get.
It's the hardest of all of. Them Why is the expected
standard of writing now so stupidly high?
We'll. Talk about that in one second.
But what happens when they publish?
Yeah, this is what happens. Children will write a piece of
writing. OK, it might be that they've
been given a prompt. It might be that on the
whiteboard there's loads of sentence starters.
It might be that next to them on their table is an entire example
of what they're supposed to be writing, where they can
constantly look at it and just change the words around a bit
and make it their own and kind of change their theme.
Maybe that's a non quality report and lizards and they're
gonna write a non chronological report and sloths and they can
get a lot of the sentence structures and copy them into
their book. And then once that's written,
the teacher can painstakingly be forced to go through that like a
fine tooth comb and get everything that's wrong with
that piece of work. Writing it, cross it out,
rewrite it, put the right thing here.
Why don't you try this sentence starter?
Fix all of these full stops. You've got no capital letters
for common nouns in there. Why don't you extend this
sentence with this and write the end of a sentence completely
right all over it. Ohh gosh no.
The moderator can't see that though because it's my work now
it's it's the teachers work. So maybe we could get the
children to publish. Yes cause publishing is
brilliant for the children and it's not a complete waste of a
lesson just to get them to copy out the teachers work which
they've written down. Yes, let's get them to publish
it in a publishing Dylan. And then the moderator can only
look at the publishing. Yes, we won't take the other
book. No, let's not take the finished
work. We don't want to show them.
No. Yeah, wanna showed that with
completely cheated, which is, which is what it is.
It's cheating the class teacher and I've heard stories, Hayden.
Luckily I've not been involved in anything like this
personally. I've heard stories from people
where they have been forced to literally take all of the books
home. Yeah, by SLT who are desperate
for the good scores to come along.
And I will say this, we we bashed SLT sometimes and I do
feel bad because there are some amazing leaders out there.
We work right now with some people.
I would never want to do that at all with them.
But you hear horror stories. I will say though with writing
it is really widespread. This is very common and the
extremes of it is they get forced to take their books.
This is a person I knew of who trained with me and had to
literally type up, rewrite that every piece of work from the
writing that was in the work. Fix it, write up, type it, print
it, give it to the children and say OK here you go, I fixed
everything. The children would have to sit
there and copy it into their. Publishing as well, so they
could say that the. Kids, So they so that they could
then go to the moderator and say, look, no teacher writing,
it's completely the work of the children, Totally independent.
Yeah. And if they took their work,
which they took in the first place.
Nowhere near it. And and this fudging is a
constant cycle because if one score does it, Oh my God they're
scores are amazing. OK, well we need to do
something. We're gonna have to put post it
notes in their book every single time there's a mistake.
And then and then ohh, you know what's great about post it?
Note we can rip them out at the end and it looks like the kids
did it themselves. Yeah, it's cheating.
They're cheating is so widespread.
In this writing, moderation, it's just normalised now as
well. You know, I've been to lots of
writing moderations and it is totally normalised.
When I see now, I actually refuse to do it.
Now I don't care. I think the rules are stupid and
I'll sit there and justify moderation every single time I
write in that book. Every single time.
Yeah, I'll write all over their work.
I'll give them feedback every single time because that's how
they learn. Yeah.
So whenever I see now in moderation, which is basically
every single book from anyone else, when I look at their work
and their last eight bits of independent writing have got no
teacher comments on them or anything.
I'm like ohh so they just they just what they just knew what
to. Do they?
Would you have? Of course.
You've given them feedback, yeah.
The fact that you haven't given them feedback in the book, like
you would do for every other subject ever, means that you've
actively thought, I won't do that.
That's cheating. I'll hide it.
I'll hide the marking and I'll do it some other way.
It's it's obvious. It's obvious.
Yeah. And a lot of you probably
listening right now. And I wouldn't be surprised
we're not having a go at you. I wouldn't be surprised if
you're if you're a year six teacher, particularly if you do
something like this and it probably wasn't even your idea.
And you probably at first thought, this is stupid and
taking up loads of my time, but you do it anyway because that's
what everyone does. Yeah.
And, you know, I've, you know, I've worked in year six for many
years. I've seen many different systems
of doing these things. And I've seen a lot.
And I've met lots of teachers in lots of schools who have all
these crazy fun ways of cheating.
Every single person justifies it.
Yeah. Ohh no, no no no.
It's for this is that I do post it notes to their work.
Not covered in no it's not. You don't post it notes so that
you can take them out and pretend that they did that.
Themselves. So very quick clarification.
The way that moderation process works for anyone who's wondering
right now is it's not like every single book ever goes to a
moderator and the moderator picks what, what level?
They're so schools systematically.
And you know what, Why wouldn't you do this?
I suppose it's it's it's less cheating than what we've just
talked about in the book. But a lot of schools will.
I'll go back to the start. Schools will look at their year
six children as they're writing and the teachers will almost
always do some self moderation. So all the year six teachers
might come in. If you're in a small school,
maybe you'll get other schools to come in and bring their
books. This is not an official
moderation. Yeah, this is simply a simply a
practise and this is good practise.
This is a good thing to do, is to look at other schools, look
at other classes get together and really show where your
levels are. Because as a teacher we need to
assess children who are below key stage.
We need to assess children who are working towards the key
stage level. We need to assess children who
are expected, where they should be for writing.
And we need to also have a bar for where children are greater
depth they're exceeding they're amazing writers.
So there's four levels to think about really, and and the bar
for where children have to be to be expected where they should be
in year six is so much higher than any bar for any other
lesson. For any other piece of work to
be expected in maths, you've got to be a decent mathematician.
You can get expected in maths if you're really good at arithmetic
and get the odd reasoning question.
It it's you know it, it's you can be a fine, you can be an OK
mathematician and get expected. For reading, again, you need to
be able to read and understand the text, but if you can read
and understand the text, you're probably going to get to
expected. Level and the threshold for the
Sats is normally like half the marks.
You just need to show that you got a good understanding.
Exactly. So you know reaching expected in
those. If you're not reaching expected
in those, it's got to be for a. Reason.
And it is actually a genuine indication of OK, you are, you
are sort of below the standard of writing, yeah.
And I'm just going to go to jump in here.
You know, you're you're a year six teacher.
Oh my God, I I am not exaggerating when I say this and
I've said this for years. I think the expected level for
writing that bar that is set should be equivalent for leaving
secondary school, leaving second.
I think it is sixth form level writing because to be expected,
genuine, expected, everyone fudges it.
But to be actually expected on paper, you have to be a perfect.
Writer OK, so come on in. So there are levels, like we
said, working towards you're not quite there.
Obviously that's going to just a lot because you're not.
Quite. I think probably about 80% of
kids in the UK are actually are actually working.
OK, so expected level for writing.
Yeah. OK, what as as someone who has
no idea, or maybe they're in year six and they're new?
Or what should we see in a piece of writing from a child to be
able to officially, properly without fudging anything from
their independent writing? What should we be able?
To say it's all, it would almost be easier to say what What can
they get away with? OK, because otherwise otherwise
I'm just going to list every single element.
Of Right. OK.
So obviously they need to understand everything.
Decision has to be perfect, so the structure has to be perfect.
They have to have written across a variety of genres.
So this is this is a macro level of you have to take into.
Account of writing. So, you know, you look at across
that book, OK? Punctuation has to be perfect.
And I'm not joking. What do you mean punctuation?
Are we talking about punctuation?
I'm talking, yeah, honestly. Capital letters, full stops,
commas in all of their youth. Which is a lot.
Parenthesis, so we're talking. Brackets, dashes, colons, and
semicolons are where you can start getting on to greater
depth. But even still, these days I
think the bar is increasing more.
You can see a semicolon and colon, and they're still, you
know, that's just about expected, right?
All the punctuation needs to be there.
Speech needs to be perfectly punctuated.
New line. New speaker.
Capital letter to start beach end punctuation properly inside
Yeah you know where Commerce question mark Where's comma
exclamation mark inside. Understanding reported speech.
Directed and direct speech and how to lay that out.
It all, all of it, has to. Contractions and spelling.
Right. Contractions.
All the spelling has to be there, the handwriting.
And the point is we've expected. Writing, unlike other tests, is
you have to have evidenced every single one to be expected, if
you've done all of it right. But you're terrible at spelling
homophones. There is an argument there to
say that kid is not affected. Now the only only thing that
might save you is and they introduce this.
I don't know when, but I guess to help this situation is a
child is allowed one special weakness.
But but am I right in thinking that it can't be spelling, it
has to be like it has to be Ed suffix?
Exactly that. It can't just be an overarching
thing. It can be handwriting, OK?
Because some kids just. Struggle and when the age now
where is as important as it was. Before, and I've had a lot.
And it's funny, because I found a lot of my best writers often
have. But here's the thing, though.
So as soon as right as soon as handwriting bad, that gives that
child no leeway whatsoever for anything else.
Yeah, basically. Right.
So that's the thing. I'll I'll pick out one of the
smaller things, modal verbs. Right.
Yeah, so if if a if a child could, yeah, if a child has
written perfectly beautiful writing, like they're really
creative and they're punctuation is great, right?
And you look through their writing.
If you're doing it by the book, if you look for their writing
and you haven't seen any good example, any examples of modal
verbs being used correctly, they are not expected.
That's crazy. That's technically how it should
be. Done.
Yeah. Writing moderation.
Does that happen? I don't know.
It depends on who you're. With so as someone who's outside
of the year 6 bubble and stuff, so I've done year three-year
four and year five. It kind of each score each
district has their own way of almost extrapolating down what a
year six expected is. So they'll say, OK, by year five
we should be hitting all of this stuff because then in year six
we can just go over everything and introduce.
The colon semicolon because there is no official standard
for each year. It's just end of key stage.
Two, so like for me looking in, I I can honestly say that I
think even at year four level because we're extrapolating the
children are less proficient at writing.
Yeah, I still think the level for expected is crazy.
Yeah. And never think about my cohorts
I, I I I probably get because I'm I'm really truthful and
everything and it's always completely independent.
I get about 50 to 60% to expected in my coach is probably
good and I think that that's that's good.
If I get half too expected, they should stay expected and then
hopefully we're gonna get some others, push it up a bit but.
Hopefully in year six it's suddenly deny 90%.
Of the nation. It's weird because it goes from
15% in year, 330%, your 435% year five and then 94% easy.
Yeah, this year 16, she's bloody good, aren't they?
But yeah, I mean it's just, it seems mad.
So I'll very quickly if that's expected level.
OK, So it sounds like it's impossible to get.
Yeah. What's great at that?
Greater depth is unreal. I'm just gonna vent for a
second. Right, greater depth.
The bar for greater depth is so high.
If you're saying expected is like secondary.
School expected is you need to be a perfect writer.
Yeah, yeah, so. With with like very, very minor,
you know there's such a small room for like a margin of error
there, such a small. I'm.
I'm thinking another word, which I hear all of the time in
moderation because obviously we go to moderation for year four,
You're free year five. Yeah.
And I know it's a big thing for year six.
And I hate it because we talked about how subjective writing is.
OK, Yeah. The number one word I hear when
someone asks, are they greater depth?
They go, oh, where's that flare? The flare all.
Where's that flare? I hate it.
Where's that flare? What do you?
Mean This is where some reason we then bring back in the
creativity. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah. And.
Then it goes down to this completely, completely.
Subject so to be expected. Grammar, punctuation, spelling
doesn't matter. It's monotonous and boring to
read because all I'm scanning for is capital letters.
Generally I don't read it and enjoy it.
So greater depths. Ohh crap Yeah wait.
But it needs to be. Good.
Greater depth is basically you've got your own authorial
style. That's crazy.
It is perfect. 10 year old. No, I'm, I'm talking now 10
years. There is no leeway now.
Yeah, so I've brought books that I thought are greater depth to
moderation before and I've had them knocked down because they
looked, they found like a mistake in a piece of writing
and being like, well, they spelt, you know, consciousness
wrong. And actually that shows they're
probably not a greater depth of spending.
Therefore they can't be greater depth.
I'm not even joking. I've had.
That's happened to me, like literally last year.
You get these like evil moderators as well, like.
And and here's the here's the mad thing, right?
I know I'm kind of going to a separate point, but it just fits
because this happened last year in moderation.
At the same time I'm sat there, I happened to be sat with the
county moderator. OK, so so you.
You've gone to Is this external moderation or is this like this
is just to help? People, this is the official
one. This is the official external
moderation. OK, there's two things that
happened to schools, by the way. If you're not in this, in this
world, this is what. Happens, so the teachers put
their thing in. Right at the end of the year,
teachers will always assess all their children's writing, right?
And there's two things that will happen to just increase the
reliability of this and and keep schools accountable.
You'll either be invited to a county moderation where loads of
teachers go into like a big hole.
Normally you all sit around tables with people you don't
know and you look at the work together right, to make sure
that you're not just cheating the system.
Or every few years your school will be ranked like Ofsted.
It will be randomly selected for an internal moderation.
You don't know what's gonna. Happen, so someone comes.
Into someone comes into the school that's been trained a bit
further than everybody else on on internal moderation.
One of my friends has done that. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. And I've had it happen to me as
well. A couple of years ago a
different school was internally moderated and this person came
in for a whole day and they randomly select children.
Sure, on your list. So when you go to the county
one, can you take who you want? Yes, because again.
You can fudge. Yeah.
The county one is a bit more fungible.
Did you just take your best ones?
And then if you say, well, if if they say that's expected, you
might, we can get all of these through.
Yeah, exactly that. So the idea is if if they don't
disagree with your judgments or county, then you're trustworthy.
And then all of your other judgments for the other 80
percent, 90% of your cohort, right.
They won't question it. So as long as you take a book,
you know, as expected, then all the other people that you fudged
for and said, Oh yeah, they're expected.
Exactly. No one's gonna know about it.
But if you go with your books that are actually what it's
supposed to be, supposed to go of your books that you're not
too sure of, Yeah, And then they help you moderate.
But the problem is if, if you go in, you have to give an initial
assessment. So if you're saying, I think
they're expected, yeah. And they knocked down two of
them to work into. We're gonna have red flags.
There's a red flag. Yeah.
And then the rest of your books
might be looked at now. So they're the two systems,
obviously the one where they come into your schools a lot
more intense because it's randomly picked and you have to
previously have already put in your assessments for these
children. So the because they're basically
testing you, they're saying, have you assessed these kids
right? And in in an eternal one, if
you've got one of them wrong, they then do have the power to
be like, OK, let's look at, let's look at.
You've assessed this kid as expected and I think it's
working towards, let's now look at all of the ones you've put as
expected because we need to check them all out.
Yeah, that's the idea, right? Yeah, you can see why it comes
in that people use published pieces and post it notes and
stuff because there's no trail. If that was to happen to you,
you've suddenly got no trial and no way for them to sniff and
say, oh, it's. Not, And every kid has to be
ready. You can't just pick your six at
the start of the year to be like, I'm gonna fudge these six
because I'll take them to moderation because you could get
internally moderated. Yeah.
Absolutely. So back to the original, I
think. I can't remember something about
no you. Right.
Yeah, great depth. You went to moderation.
So, alright, so annoying, right? And I got so frustrated at the
time it happened. I sat down at the table and I
just happened to sit with the table that the person that was
leading the moderation, like the county put the leader, came over
and sat with me and I was like, oh, typical, here we go.
Like, you know, she's going to be harsh.
I only knew the system was broken, so I already knew that
she was going to be harsher than someone else.
I looked across at other tables and and I spoke to some friends
that were from other schools who were like, yeah, these two guys
on my table were both honestly, just being like, actually, I'll
put yours for if you put mine through.
No. And you just think, Oh my God,
so our potluck, I've sat here, she's knocked down a couple of
my books, which I thought were a mate.
I thought these kids are amazing.
Yeah. And she's gone.
Yeah. But she's, you know, found one
or two mistakes and not. Great gone really by the.
Book not, not great, but I'm thinking these kids are, They're
like 5-6, seven years above that level of age.
They're ten. Yeah.
They're writing these beautiful pieces with their own style.
Didn't spell consciousness right.
And then the other table, you just see people.
Yeah, great depth. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I saw, I watched this one guy and I won't forget it
because it really annoyed me. So I watched this one guy.
I have an argument on my table with someone else who works at
our school saying that this, that this kid that he's got was
greater depth, right. I had a quick look at the book.
Absolutely not. Barely expected by their
standard. Barely, barely expected.
You know if you're being kind you just wouldn't wouldn't back
down and end up putting for his greater depth.
You just think oh, this is just such a stupid system so that
kids got through who's barely expected.
My kid who I think is great to death, maybe isn't because you
know, trust is moderate. At least extremely high expected
hasn't got through and is that OK, so that and that's the data
that's published in our school is it?
Ohh I I. Hate it.
It's completely broken the whole system and and this is the this
comes the issue because like from mining mining yours point
of view honestly I look at this system for for writing
assessment and I think it's an absolute joke.
I can't believe This is why we've landed.
But then you look at what happened beforehand and you look
at teachers with more experience, like I said earlier,
who are just like, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Thank God they got rid of the old one because at least
teachers take back some control now.
And I think there's there's two massive things wrong with this.
The two, the two biggest things that are wrong with this are
first and foremost what it constitutes to be an expected
writer. And the greater depth writer is
way too hard. The kids are 10.
So we've absolutely killed. Or creativity when it comes to
writing and you know very quickly Do you know, do you know
why? Do you know how I know we've
killed or creativity with writing Because we'll read a
class book together and instead of just enjoying the book.
I'll have children put the hand go.
Should there be a comma after that front step.
No, it doesn't matter. This is a published author.
We're reading Varjak Paw. This is such a cool story.
And they're they're sat there thinking, well, wait a minute,
this author didn't put a front to book.
This author didn't use speech in the way we've.
Been We've started with and. They started with and at the
start of writing, yeah, because it's bloody good.
It's a bloody good book and it's writing.
It should be malleable. It should be fun.
It should be something we can enjoy.
There are some rules to be broken exactly.
Just going back to this point here, just read this again, part
of the review before this came in.
Teachers big, big, big risk and teacher assessment.
Teachers make generous assessments under increasing
pressures. You know, I think that
summarises everything we just said.
That's exactly what's happened. Increasing pressures, increasing
bar ohh what's happened? Generous assessments?
Of course it has. Because if you do the right
thing in this system, which is to completely independent
writing. So if if you're if you're going
to do this thing where you can't touch it because you need to
show that it's their writing. If you actually do that, none of
your. Kids will get can you tell me
then I know you've sort of we've kind of gone over it but I wanna
really really clear answer now concise what is what would you
constitute as an independent right.
And I want and I want people any teachers listening I want you to
think of this as what you do or not at your school.
So not blaming. We're not saying like you're bad
or good. But just think about, can I
clarify with you, Is it what I think independent rights should
be or is it what I currently see, independent writers?
No, it's what you think it's supposed to be like based on
your knowledge of the system and what a rod, true, independent
right is supposed to look like. So what you see in the
classroom, what they can and can't do to help and all that.
OK, for me personally, it would be.
It would start off with the two or three weeks prior to the
writing. So you would have to teach
children explicitly and give them a chance to practise with
your help before the independent right.
The reason you have to do that is because when it comes to
independent right, you shouldn't be allowed to do that.
So for example, let's say we're doing a story middle right,
we're just doing not doing a full story.
We're going to concentrate in the middle.
We're going to have a setting description, a bit of action,
and then it's gonna end with a dialogue.
Yeah, so we're bringing together a lot of stuff we've done
before. We might do a couple of lessons
on speech where we literally just practise how to build a
sentence using speech, and maybe they get a go at writing a
dialogue, completely separate to anything.
But I'm there with them, teaching them how to do it,
giving them feedback. Feedback, lots of feedback, lots
of marking, lots of group work, lots of verbal feedback.
I've done that for a couple of weeks, done all this preaching,
really heavily involved, modelled with you.
So when it comes to the day where I want to do an
independent, right, yeah, they've done lots of practise.
I think this is really important, they've done lots of
practise with me helping. Them give this poster look.
Like it should be. The children sat there for an
extended period of time. Hmm.
They've done their plan. So again, you've gone.
You've done a plan with them in the lessons beforehand, not
where you've fed them exactly what to put You've given them
lots of opportunities to take from.
You've given them prompts on the board, you've given them word
mats. You've given them everything
they could possibly need, all of the kind of structure they could
possibly have for them to take from to plan.
Not me. I'm not giving them the plan.
I'm just facilitating the plan. Then when it comes to the
independent write on the day, all of that structure, the word
mats aren't out anymore. The the, the waggle, the example
writing, that's not on the table anymore.
What's on their table is their plan that they've done.
From all the stuff they've got, all the work previously where
they've practised on the board. I would put what I want to see
in their writing. So I would put on the board like
sentence starters. Yeah, sentence starters,
dialogue. I might put noun phrases.
Yeah. I don't give them the noun
phrases, but I just say I want to see noun phrases so the child
can look at it and go, OK, I need to put noun phrases in and
then independently do it so prompt on the board of what I
want to see. Do you think that's their plan?
I think that's independent in that the writing, what they
produce is completely independent because I can't.
This is where I have to draw the line, because I can't let them
plan and have nothing and then right, it won't produce anything
that's remotely good. Short term, so that they're.
Not, no, no, I I completely agree.
And if we're going off purely independent, yeah, I think
that's fine. I think a nice middle ground is
not giving them any hint as to how to do.
It, yeah. But what I want to say, for
example, I wouldn't not give them the genre.
OK, So I would say to them, OK, we're doing a, like I said, a
story middle. I need to see noun phrases.
I need to see description. I need to see a setting
description and a piece of action before we go into a
dialogue with two characters of your.
Choice isn't even that funny if you really think about it,
because really the only reason you're doing that is because you
know that you need to take these boxes off for them to get to
expected. Well, I I guess that is true,
but also I'm kind of testing them in a way to see if they
know how to apply noun phrases. But because you've been so my,
I'm just gonna be devil's advocate.
Yeah. Because I'm probably worse than
you by the way. You know, I'll over support and
I think I really should do that because the system is so.
Broken very quickly some people put the sentence started on the
board so they put surprisingly comma and I'm like that is just
showing them how to do that's to me that's very.
Different. Yeah, you know that.
Sorry, Even what I do, I I honestly think if we were truly
doing independent writing, it should just be everything you
talked about, even like even like saying what to have in it,
like noun phrase and things. They should have had
opportunities to learn that in the three weeks before when it
comes to independent, right. I think if we were doing it
properly, it should be test conditions, it should be OK,
guys, today this is what you're writing.
You're going to use everything you've learned you can think of.
Here's the title. But don't you think that goes
back to the old system, which is just a cold prompt, and then you
just turn into the external writer?
Yeah, that's supposed to be because I think that's actually
what it's supposed to be. That's the opinion I get is
that. But I thought it said like you
know, have marking, have feedback, help.
Them out? Yeah, that's fine marking
feedback after, but I think each of the pieces of writing across
the should be should be test conditions plus the three weeks
before you've. Actually it's funny because the
only the things I write on the board are the things I have in
my assessment sheets. For them it's like OK, well to
be here for because in our school we have every year group
the English needs have think their own kind of grid.
Yeah. So the year 6 grids obvious it's
just everything. Yeah.
But my year four grid, for example, would say evidence of
dialogue between 2 characters. Simple as that.
It doesn't have to be anything more complicated than just two
characters talking. Yeah, so I'll say to them, OK,
in this piece of writing, I'd like to see dialogue between 2
characters. Tick.
Off. But really, could someone, could
someone write a good story about dialogue?
Yeah, yeah, that does exist in reality.
But if you've taught them, you'd hope they've.
Applied hope they Yeah. And I think the point I think
what it's supposed to be is, yeah, you just, it's just a
chance. Then you've taught them the
dialogue. So it's up to them now whether
they want to put it on and if they don't, it's crazy.
If they don't put it in, we've got a system we we don't agree
with that says they're not. Expecting.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Whereas in reality, they could have been a really nice story
with dialogue, Yeah, yeah. And.
And they could show that they actually are an expected level
writer. They just haven't happened to
use dialogue. So I think the system
infiltrates our minds from even the deepest levels of trying to
do things. Wrong.
When you do a genre for example, let's say I'm doing non
chronological report or or let's say newspaper report rather.
I know there's like a tick box somewhere where it's like a
caption needs to show a caption to a picture, and I'm like the
only chance I'll ever get to do that as a newspaper report.
Or maybe not. Yeah, so you make.
So. So when they when it comes to
that, I if I don't tell them to do it, umm, and they don't do
it. Yeah that means that that kid
for that year now is not expected because they've missed
their one thing. Yeah.
So I think that it's true it's it's double edged sword here
which is the the issue is it's really hard to reach any kind of
level because it's just ridiculously high expectations
for children to reach that needs to be sorted in my opinion.
But because it's ridiculously high you need to get absolutely
everything in your writing and only some genres lend themselves
to some of the things you need to get.
When it comes to writing it, you're going to say to your
kids, listen, at the very least I need to see a dialogue.
Yeah. Then what happens is the other
problem is how far scores want to push this and how how far
we're going to judge it. Because the the scale of
independence, to go back to your question, it is a sliding scale.
Yeah. So how independent is writing?
Cool. We go from literally saying to
them, right? Yeah, Nothing else we could say,
right. A newspaper report.
We could say write a newspaper report.
Make sure you put your your subtitles in your your
captioning and it's in paragraphs.
Please write a newspaper report about this thing.
You've not even got the choice anymore.
It's about this thing because I think choice is a big thing and
independent writing. We always give the children the
choice. For example, in the dialogue
that we're writing. With my year fours currently,
it's between anyone and the setting.
They can run past whatever they want.
So there's the choice, but the structures.
Always. You know, one one more way that
is often fudged, costing us a lot in your yeah, I've seen it.
A lot is. The plan also gets taken into
account. So you talk about doing a plan,
maybe a quite a scaffolded plan. Yeah, that wouldn't go down in
in year 6IN in moderation. If the plan looks like it had a
bit too much scaffolding in it, in writing the piece of writing,
it struck off. It can't be.
Used. Not even joking, so as you can.
Imagine, I guess because I have the plan with them, they're.
Right. Easy ways to fudge it.
Plan doesn't go to book. Much evidence of a plan.
Yeah, they have to. You're supposed to.
So, So what you do, You have another plan.
Ohh, people do it. Do it.
People do it. So much joking.
People have like a really quick plan they do in their books to
make it look good and then have the real plan that they have on
a bit of paper that gets put in the bin afterwards.
It happens. One big poster.
Yeah, literally. I just hate it.
So I think, yeah, just to summarise, we can talk about
this forever, but to summarise your, you know, big question
about the independence, how independent is it?
I don't know. Because it's not monitored, it's
not standardised, the independence of writing isn't
remotely standardised and it's totally, totally fungible.
So that was first with the exam. Yeah, that's a big thing that
was lost to the exam. So what's the answer?
That's this is the thing I've been thinking about the whole
time all the in the lead up to this episode.
Because normally I'm like, I just don't know because I don't
think the, I think the exam was horribly flawed as we've talked
about for all the reasons we've said at the start, I think this
system has been taken advantage of even more sure I think to the
absolute Max. And it's meant that the bar is
raised now to an unattainable standard for an actual average
child. So what's the answer?
And it's funny enough, when I was reading this review, I was
like, ohh, the answer was what the review said in 2011.
Well, honestly, but is it like because that was what happened
and where we? Are.
Yeah. We just didn't do it properly.
Yeah. It got it got taken advantage
of. I don't know I I think there's.
I think there is a middle ground.
Yeah. I think there is a middle ground
where we still look at lots of pieces of writing from across
the year. Sure, we scrap this stupid
mentality of. Teachers can't possibly give any
input. Yeah, teachers can't possibly.
It's just an exercise book. I would say I think that's
really going on jump in there because I think what you're
saying is absolutely right. Why not moderate the pros?
Like it said, the process of you marking as well, rather than
just your children? And I think every school, I
think we make it more commonplace that we have an
external moderator. We get rid of this.
We get rid of this stupid county moderation stuff and it's just
every year someone comes into your and they look at some books
with you and that's just how it works every single year.
Hmm. Could it still be fudged?
Yeah, I'm sure it can. Yeah.
But we get rid of published work.
That's just that rule that you can't have it because we know
it's. We know it's fake.
When you as a moderator and you see that, you must know it's
completely cheating. Yeah, it's it's stupid.
And we just make some rules of OK, if the work has no teacher.
Yeah. That that's been fudged
published book, we assume it's been fudged and we just make all
these things just outcast. And it's like, no, the only
thing that's acceptable now is an exercise book.
Yeah. And again, I don't think
anything wrong with just flicking back a couple.
Of pages. Yeah, they did learn writing
here. Yeah, OK And they've applied.
OK, cool. Or they got it there and they
got a bit wrong, but then the teacher said remember this and
they fixed it. Ohh, that's good.
That's good process. Because guess what, official,
proper authors do not put in their first draught ever.
I say to the kids all the time, I know authors.
We know authors who've done books to help with, you know,
tests and things and vocabulary books.
They have an editor, like thank God for my editor because I
constantly make these grammatical errors.
And it's just, it's just of of course these are 10 and all
we've done, all we've done by the way, to get my high horse
now. But all we've done with writing
is completely killer, completely killer.
Because writing now is a tick box exercise.
Even the most independent of writers, the most teachers who
want to give the least possible will say to their children, I
need to see this, this, this, this and this.
The children are sat there instead of thinking what's next,
what's the next thing? I make this story really
interesting. Well, no, no, no, no, no, not
what I like. Doesn't matter because ohh.
Gosh, Mr. Price is saying it needs to be now praise.
He wants to tick the box on what's the tick off.
I get it. But now I'm raising.
It's completely irrelevant. I feel sorry for my sixes
because we give them it takes so long to mark anything.
But you know we give them which I show them the assessment grid
because they're just that. Yeah, of course I show my time
and I said at the. End of the day, this is what I'm
assessing against. Tell them straight away to be
expected. You need to have basically takes
off all these boxes a couple of times to show that you can do it
and they will just look at their target cards now and I actually
hate it. I'm sat there thinking I just
want them to enjoy the writing. What I'm really doing is
thinking I'm not even modal verbs in all no, I better put
some into this, right? And then you read it and it's so
clunky. But guess what?
You don't even. Read it properly when you mark
it because all you're doing is amount of uptick.
Let's take Yep, let's go. It doesn't matter that there's
no way that I could have. Does not remotely fit into that
flow of the right It doesn't matter.
Beautiful description. And it goes we.
Should go Ohh, OK, it's expected now.
Yeah, it's just one of the first times.
Our episodes I I don't. Really have the.
Answers, even what I just said They're hugely flawed.
Yeah, of course it's sort of. I don't.
I was gonna come back to and I was like, there's no point
because we know it's flawed. Yeah, you know what it should
be. I think the.
Number one thing we can do right now, and it should be absolutely
introduced straight away, is quite simply lower the bloody
levels. Yeah, lower the levels.
That's that's the number one stop.
Stop expecting the government, love it.
The government know there's all the.
Fudging is happening, but it looks good.
But wow, look how good our. Country is, but look at.
So it's all fake? Wow.
Look how good our country is. Lower the bar.
They're still gonna be. We've decided what?
Expected is yeah the government go ohh. 80% are expected.
OK lower the bar. Guess what 80% will still be
expected. Yeah.
So you can still go around and say Ohh.
Actually I bet yeah no one cares.
Let children absolutely don't like writing anymore.
Who would have loved it before because they can't be creative.
Why didn't they go and draw a comic book Because that's a
lovely bit of writing. It's a made no chance of that
ever boring. Just for a bit of fun.
A couple of years ago, I got my because we.
Went to same school, We both went to it.
We were in Kent. Grammar Schools are heavy around
here. We both went to grammar school
and I thought, OK, I went to a grammar school.
I wonder what my writing was like.
And I and I loved creative writing.
And I got my year seven books out and they were atrocious,
Atrocious. But where were they?
Were they similar to your? Children would be today if you
didn't do all the fudging. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
definitely. So you were.
You were. Yeah, absolutely.
I tell you what, it was good. I looked at it.
I was like, oh, this is really well.
Written in terms of, like, creativity, sure.
But I did I my spellings were dreadful.
I didn't use any correct punctuation anywhere, But if you
just read it out loud, yeah, it was really good.
Because people would say to that, well, it's better now
then. And it's like, no, no, no.
All that's happened in the meantime is 10s and hundreds of
hours of teacher work to fudge what you were as a writer to
looking pristine and perfect. Yeah, yeah, the actual ability
of you to the actual ability of the children now.
Not much different at all. No, of course it's not.
And you've got to enjoy your writing.
One guess. What you still?
Can't spell, yeah, yeah. But I guess my overall my
overall point was I still. Went to grammar school, Yeah.
Whereas now that would have been assessed as working towards.
No way would have been to grammar school.
Working toward that would have been like going to grammar
school, working towards writing, Yeah, but no.
But yeah, but again, I'm going to come back to.
The point it's the same level like the the children.
This is the same that you would have been expected because your
teacher would have it. Back then it was a system.
So it's the exact same that we're we're we're making up
these boundaries and putting a really high marker and putting
children down as they can't write when they bloody can.
Cause they're ten. Yeah.
For a 10 year old they can write.
Yeah, exactly. And you know what?
What is writing? It's just this construct of for
all these rules. Oh, but also be careful when you
put that in the middle of a sentence because sometimes you
don't need a comma, but if you put which you do need a comma,
get in the bin. I don't care.
I don't care When they read their book from like whoever's
reading, like they got their class text and there's no
following this at all. This is a published off by the
way, the best seller and you're loving this book.
Who cares where the comma goes? Yeah, no one, right?
Dylan, can I end this conversation with a summary?
Yeah, of just making. Please do because I need to.
Go. I've got, I've got brunch.
You'll be pleased to know Plan is a summary then of of why the
system is broken. There's some bullet points we've
talked about right up, number one.
Yeah, we just spent an hour. So this this minute will help.
Too much teacher input. I think we explored that even.
From your energy, it's just it's too much teaching, but we think
we do too much. The published workbooks, they're
broken. They're just Felicia.
Stupid rules. Around having work which has
been marked by teachers. Wait, we?
Have to mark everything to the end of the grid, but this one
thing, no, don't touch it. Yeah.
Not as market can't show any is
marking. Useful or not then?
Because if it's not. Useful.
I don't do it for anything. Yeah, yeah, it's still stupidly.
Subjective, yeah. As I said, from my experience
with moderation, that will never go.
To me. It's a bit like art, you know?
You can. You can look at your strokes and
your pencils thing isn't it really is is completely teacher
confidence. The great others work.
If you're sat there and they're not confident, Not confident,
it's expected. Yeah, I think so.
Or someone can bully away like you said.
That's great depth. Not backing down and you're
like, OK, well they really confident.
It's not my job to care, OK. I don't want an argument about
moderation. And the the final one was to
your point, Yeah, How, how independent really is it?
Is it really independent? I don't know.
We can argue about the scale of what independence is, but it's
not. It's not moderated independence.
So why, why wouldn't you push that vote?
Yeah. Of course, because until the.
Levels change. That's my #1.
Thing to come out of this, what could we do immediately to start
fixing the problem would be your Change this to.
How much percentage of children in the country that are truly
producing independent writing across the year as there are
examples of that go to moderation, truly independent,
what would you say? 5%, Yeah, I was, I was gonna say
something under 10 as well, I reckon.
I reckon 5% because. Because if you're saying what I
do is not independent, it's probably zero.
Yeah. Genuinely.
Yeah. If if you're perfect, give it.
No, no, no, no. I'm just saying, if you give the
genre and what you're looking for, if you're saying that's not
independent, think it is, then not no one.
Yeah, scaffolding too. Much No.
One No. But if you're giving the genre
and saying at some point put noun phrases and modal verbs and
this and now, I'd argue that's independent, yeah.
And I I think so as well. But in our system, I don't think
it is, yeah. Yeah, the system.
Because you told me to put it. Yeah, yeah, Matt.
Completely broken. Completely, completely good
vent. Yeah, I kind of know what.
You guys think? Because I don't know.
The answer is I don't know what the answer is.
No. You you might have a really good
idea of how we should change the system to actually assess
writing a bit more effectively. And what do you do in your
school? You know, you know you might.
Message. I'm not going to put it anywhere
guys, especially on this, but if you've seen stuff which you just
think is crazy or you know what works for you.
What doesn't work have been asked to do something ridiculous
when it comes to writing before, which not only completely cheats
the system but adds unbelievable stress to your workload and you
just think. E-mail us at Whistle Blow at
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